


Beautiful Idiots

by MegaBadBunny



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cunnilingus, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Femandchips, Femslash, Ficandchips, Nightmares, Oral Sex, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 03:11:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8234056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegaBadBunny/pseuds/MegaBadBunny
Summary: Because Time Ladies don’t get nightmares, even when they do. (The metacrisis fem!Doctor seeks solace from Rose in the middle of the night. Find the smut-free sfw version on fanfiction.net!)





	

It doesn’t matter how they start—they all end the same way.

(She stubbornly refuses to call them _nightmares,_ even in her own head, because she’s stubborn, clinging to that last piece of Gallifreyan pride, and _Time Ladies don’t get nightmares,_ even when they do.)

Sometimes they have a row. Or at least the Doctor thinks they must have; she can’t recall the words exactly, only the emotion behind them. It never occurs to her to worry about this, that she can’t remember the fight. But then, that’s dream logic for you. Dread weighs heavy in the pit of her stomach as she watches Rose turn and leave. The Doctor calls her name, follows after her, but no matter how loudly she shouts, how quickly she runs, she can’t catch up to Rose, can’t stop her. The more she reaches, the further away Rose is.

Occasionally things take on a nonsensical tone. They’re in the middle of saving some planet or other, outrunning a giant sentient inflatable tyrannosaurus rex or negotiating on the planet of the hats. Everything seems good and well until all of a sudden it isn’t; the Doctor says something, or does something, she wouldn’t have done before. (She doesn’t think of it as _Before_ when she’s awake, because she was herself then and she’s still herself now, and as far as she’s concerned, there’s little differentiating between the two.) But Rose’s lips still and her face falls. Her hand flies to her chest, and the Doctor realizes that she’s wearing her TARDIS key (still, or maybe again), and the Doctor knows what Rose will say next, knows what she will do.

Other times, the Doctor comes home—only it isn’t home, not exactly, not at all, it doesn’t look anything like home but it feels like home in her ribs in just the way things do in dreams—and Rose is gone.

If these were waking hours, the Doctor’s mind would calculate in a matter of milliseconds every likely scenario: Rose is answering an emergency call from Torchwood, she’s with her mum and Pete, she’s picking Tony up from school, she’s out at the shops with Annie from the office, she’s in the garden playing with the stray cat who is far too friendly and frequent to really be considered “stray” anymore. But the Doctor’s sleeping mind is treacherous, full of thorns and crumbling ground, and the moment her foot crosses the dream-threshold, she realizes that Rose is properly gone. Feels it in the same way she can’t ignore her singular heartbeat; knows it the same way she knows this strange murky shadow-place is home.

And sometimes, if she’s very, very unlucky, she dreams about Rose, and a white room, and a pair of levers, all at the top of a tall tower. It isn’t the Dimension Cannon—she knows it isn’t—but since she’s never seen it, her brain helpfully supplies the next best (worst) thing.

(In her dreams, Rose never says anything. She doesn’t have to.)

Rose pulls the lever and a blinding white light floods the room, winds whipping through with a howl. The Doctor tells her (begs her) to stop, but it doesn’t come out right. It’s all just meaningless gibberish that even the TARDIS wouldn’t translate. Words empty of purpose. Dream-language. And she just stands there, mute and unmoving while her solitary heart pounds and her skull aches. While Rose steps back into the other universe.

(There are other dreams, of course, other things that haunt the Doctor in the night. Inhuman memories are poorly handled by a human body armed only with human defenses. But images of Davros and Rassilon and Arcadia and the Valeyard and even a traitorous love whose face changes along with hers are all things she can handle. There’s a certain morbid safety to them in this new universe, in knowing that here, none of those things exist. Here, none of those things are real. Moreover, they’ve haunted her for so long now, even since _Before_ , that they are almost comfortable fears, a familiar guilt living in her skin. She knows how to deal with those things.

She doesn’t know how to deal with this.)

Of course, Rose has a solution—it’s waiting (just _waiting_ ) on the tip of her tongue every time the Doctor wakes her with her twitches and trashes and short, sharp breaths that puncture holes in the quiet night air. But Rose won’t say anything. Instead she chooses to feign ignorance, for the Doctor’s sake more than hers, she thinks. Rose lies in silence rather than risk hurting her pride. In so many ways, she continues to follow the map they both drew _Before_.

(Besides, Rose doesn’t know what the Doctor dreams about, only that she dreams.)

The solution goes unsaid but Rose’s little black book of contacts is left conspicuously out in the open, its contents splayed for all to see. It’s always the same page winking back up at the Doctor, its paper gone crinkly from moisture, its corner stained with something that’s hopefully coffee. A name and a number are written in blue, in Rose’s loopy scrawl. The name and number of a doctor.

( _No, a physician_ , the Doctor tells herself every time she sees it, and she refuses to think about why.)

It’s an invitation. A gentle nudge. But the Doctor doesn’t know how to explain that that feels like cheating somehow. Like the use of human conventions would be a betrayal to her own kind, when she should be better than this on her own, without help. She shouldn’t need assurance or counsel, shouldn’t allow herself the temptation of pharmaceuticals or quietly wish for the comfort of Rose’s touch when she wakes up shouting in the night. _She should just be better_.

Unfortunately, somewhere in the firing of her synapses, that message appears to be lost to her subconscious. Because tonight, deep in a labyrinthine sleep, she stands on that godsforsaken beach again. They’re all inside the TARDIS, all of them, everyone except Rose. And _her_.

Tonight, she has a nightmare.

“I’m sorry,” Rose says, and because she’s Rose, the Doctor knows she means it, even if happiness glitters in the corners of her eyes and pulls at her lips. “It’s just…”

She glances back at the other Doctor with a shy grin, and the Doctor’s insides burn with jealousy.

“What will you do now?” Rose asks, turning back to her.

“Same old life,” says her mouth, giving shape to her words. Lying on her behalf.

Rose’s smile never falters. “It’s not your fault, you know.” She laughs, the sound a full-bodied and melodious thing. “You couldn’t help it. None of us asked to be made.”

Something fiery burns in the Doctor’s veins, scalds the backs of her eyelids and boils in her lungs. “I love you,” she blurts out, and she doesn’t even bother to hide the desperation in her voice, the ragged plea.

Laughing again, Rose shakes her head. “You’re so funny,” she says between giggles. Slow steps backward bring her closer to the other Doctor (the proper one), until she reaches back for the Doctor’s hand and twines her fingers around hers. “How come I never knew how funny you are?”

The Doctor’s throat seizes up, trapping words like _Stop_ and _Rose_ and _Please_ inside.

The next thing she knows, Rose is gone, her other self is nowhere to be seen, and a series of telltale grinding sounds let her know that the TARDIS is preparing for dematerialization.

( _She won’t change_ , the Doctor wants to shout. _She can’t._ But it wouldn’t matter even if the words had managed to escape. The TARDIS is gone.

She is alone.)

The Doctor startles awake, wrenched out of sleep by the sound of someone shouting. (It’s her.)

“Wha’?” a voice slurs from somewhere on her right, so quiet that the sound barely makes it over the Doctor’s pulse hammering in her ears. “Wha’s happen?”

Too busy forcing air in and out of her lungs, the Doctor can’t reply yet. She just clutches her chest and waits for the choking gasps to subside, or at the very least for her heart to stop pounding. She’s trembling, doused in an icy sweat.

A hand lights on her shoulder. “Are you all right?” the voice asks, louder and more lucid this time. The Doctor turns to see Rose staring at her; even in the dark, her face only half-lit by watery moonlight, it’s obvious that she’s concerned. The sight of her, worried but safe and here and in bed—in _their_ bed, the one they share, together—floods the Doctor with relief and embarrassment in equal measure.

“Doctor?” Rose tries again. “What’s—”

Her question is cut short by the Doctor’s arms looping around her, drawing her near. The Doctor buries her face in Rose’s neck and wills her not to speak.

If Rose picks up on the silent cue, she ignores it. “Doctor…”

“Please,” she says, her voice muffled against Rose’s throat. “Just…”

Rose waits patiently for her to finish, but in truthfulness, even the Doctor doesn’t know what was going to follow. So she tightens her arms around Rose instead, eliminates even the thought of distance between them.

“God, you’re really shaking,” Rose whispers. Her fingers fist in the back of the Doctor’s nightshirt. “What’s wrong?”

She doesn’t have a reply—at least, not one that doesn’t sound unbearably pitiful, pathetic even—so she loosens her hold on Rose just enough that she can kiss her instead. Rose does not open her mouth at first, like she’s being stubborn, like she knows exactly what the Doctor is doing (and she does; she knows that granting the Doctor access means relinquishing control). But after a moment her lips part, allowing the Doctor just the smallest sliver of a window. Fingers wrapped around Rose’s chin, the Doctor kisses her greedily.

Rose tries to lean back. “Don’t you think we should talk?”

“No.”

The Doctor chases after her, pressing her lips to Rose’s again, eyes closed so that she doesn’t have to see the worry on Rose’s face anymore. She deepens the kiss, her tongue gliding over the plump swell of Rose’s lower lip. Rose tastes like sleep and spearmint and tea and _her_ and it’s exactly what the Doctor needs right now. But she wants more.

One hand trails downward, tracing the slope of Rose’s neck before sliding down to her breast. The Doctor cups it through her tee (the Doctor’s tee, really, even if she secretly loves seeing it on Rose) and Rose’s nipple stiffens beneath her touch, peaking sharply through thin cotton. Back arching, Rose presses her breast into the Doctor’s hand, whimpering when she teases her nipple with her thumb.

It’s a gorgeous sound and a lovely feeling and the Doctor wants more.

Pushing Rose’s shirt up and over her breasts, the Doctor charts her territory with her mouth, marking Rose’s neck with her lips, her collarbone with her teeth. When she kisses a line downward and closes her lips around a flushed nipple, Rose writhes against her, gasping. Arousal stirs in the Doctor at the sound of Rose’s breathy exhales, the soft-salty-sweet taste of her skin and the sting of her nails digging into the Doctor’s shoulders. Upon feeling warmth blossom from between Rose’s legs, the Doctor is suddenly hot and uncomfortably wet in her pants. She ignores it, choosing instead to tease Rose through her knickers, rubbing circles around and over her clit as she laves the nipple in her mouth.

Panting, Rose reaches down, her fingers slipping just beneath the Doctor’s waistband. But the Doctor stops her, grabbing her by the forearm. She doesn’t have to look at Rose’s face to know the question displayed there as she reaches for a necktie draped around one of the bedposts. She loops it around a slat in the headboard and both of Rose’s wrists, tying them snugly. It shouldn’t be tight enough to hurt. But it’s tight enough that Rose would struggle to get free.

(She would have trouble leaving.)

Rose doesn’t stop her, doesn’t protest, but the Doctor can still see out of the corner of her eye that she looks worried. Not for herself; they established months ago that they both trust each other, that they would never cause each other harm. (Not here, not like this, anyway.) No. Rose is still worried about the Doctor.

Ducking her head, the Doctor presses a kiss to the silky skin between Rose’s breasts, to the birthmark at the bottom of her ribcage, to the soft barely-swell beneath her naval, lower. She hooks her fingers in Rose’s pants and pulls, sliding them over her legs and discarding them. Except for the shirt bunched above her breasts, Rose is completely bare to the Doctor’s gaze, everything from the pink-plum buds of her nipples to the dark thatch of hair between her legs on display, and god, she’s beautiful. Light streaming in from the window paints the slopes and planes of Rose’s body in a soft almost-white; the Doctor wants to taste every place she glows.

Rose squirms beneath her and the Doctor knows she’s rubbing her thighs together for any friction she can get. The Doctor resists the urge to do the same, to relieve her own aching need. But Rose still has that _look_ on her face, the stupid horrible worried one.

“Doctor…”

“I don’t want to hear it,” the Doctor breathes, easing a hand between Rose’s legs, settling herself closer. She nips at Rose’s hipbone and Rose tenses beneath her. “Not unless you’re screaming it.”

Before Rose has a chance to reply, the Doctor lowers her head and kisses her hairline. Rose arches into her touch, her breath hitching and thighs parting; the Doctor takes advantage of the opening, spreading Rose’s legs further apart until she can loop a knee over her shoulder, finding her clit with her tongue.

Gasping, her arms taut and trembling, Rose strains against her makeshift bonds. She’s so responsive, instantly slickening under the Doctor’s attentions, and the Doctor can feel her own body responding in kind, her nipples sharp and swollen, her sex wet and throbbing. She sets a punishing rhythm, alternately teasing and sucking, firmer and faster and harder and more. Rose is trying not to grind down on her mouth—the Doctor can feel it in the way her legs go stiff, hear it in how her breaths leave her with a whimper—but that won’t do, no, that won’t do at all. She needs to _feel_ Rose, all of her, warm and soft and wet, everywhere. She shifts her weight so that she can reach up and ease a finger inside.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Rose hisses, her head thrown back on the pillows. Her muscles clench around the Doctor’s finger, ringing it tightly, and the Doctor slowly pulls it out, only to push it back in again, deeper this time. Rose’s hips buck against her and she pumps her finger in and out in time to the thrusts, offering a countermeasure in the laps of her tongue, losing herself in the heat and the friction and taste of it all.

Before long, the Doctor can tell that Rose is going to come. Her coiling muscles give her away, and when the Doctor looks up, she sees that Rose is biting her lip, her eyes screwed tightly shut in concentration. Her stomach and thighs glisten in the moonlight, slippery with sweat and sex.

“God,” Rose grits out, “please, Doctor, oh fuck—”

A shout escapes her as her climax ripples through, her muscles fluttering madly around the Doctor’s finger and tongue. But the Doctor doesn’t take the time to work Rose down like she normally does—instead, just as the last of the waves crashes over her, the Doctor crawls back up the bed, kissing a line up to Rose’s breast before she takes a nipple in her mouth again.

Rose cries out at the contact. It’s almost too much, the Doctor knows; almost too much, almost too soon. It’s greedy, the way she’s drawing this out, prolonging the high note rather than letting it gently fade. But she is an expert musician, and Rose is her favorite instrument.

“Doctor, please,” Rose gasps out, pulling at her bonds until the headboard creaks with the strain. “Please, I want to touch you, let me—”

The Doctor sucks at her nipple, _hard_ , grazing it with her teeth afterward, and Rose’s voice breaks off with a sharp groan. She doesn’t ask again, but she does push her leg insistently between the Doctor’s thighs. The Doctor grinds down without even thinking about it, her fists twisting in the sheets beside Rose as she finally ( _finally_ ) allows herself some relief, her mouth falling open. She doesn’t even waste time taking off her knickers. She just situates herself until Rose’s thigh is hitting her just so, rutting against her desperately as she sucks at Rose’s throat and slips her hand back between Rose’s legs.

They’re both moving together now, bodies heaving and churning like the ocean during a storm. Something coils deep down in the Doctor’s belly and she knows she doesn’t have long before she snaps.

“Doctor, please, kiss me,” Rose pleads; the Doctor draws upward and presses her lips to Rose’s. Rose opens her mouth and she chases after, deepening the kiss. Rose moans at her taste on the Doctor’s tongue.

“I’m yours,” the Doctor gasps into Rose’s mouth. She breaks away, kissing Rose’s cheek, her jaw, her throat. “I’m yours, my life is yours, I belong to you—”

“I know,” Rose laughs, and her smile is just like it was in the nightmare, the laugh a carbon copy, and the Doctor’s anxiety must be showing on her face, because suddenly Rose isn’t smiling anymore.

The Doctor bends down, hiding her face under the pretense of biting Rose’s shoulder, but Rose shakes her off. “What’s this all about?” she asks.

“Nothing,” the Doctor lies. She kisses Rose’s mouth again, her hand working between Rose’s legs. Rose is so close again; she just needs another moment. The Doctor shifts the angle of her fingers and Rose’s eyes flutter shut briefly, her stomach muscles clenching.

“Just don’t leave me,” the Doctor says quietly.

Rose’s eyes widen and her movements grind to a halt. “What?”

The Doctor hesitates. Did she really just say that out loud?

“Untie me,” Rose demands, chest heaving. “ _Now_.”

The Doctor goes cold, like someone dumped a sack of ice down the back of her shirt. This time, she complies, reaching up to loosen the necktie. Nervous, the Doctor opens her mouth to ask if she went too far—surely Rose would have let her know?—but the second the tie goes slack, Rose yanks free and pushes at the Doctor, flipping her onto her back.

“Had just about enough of this,” Rose growls as she sits up, straddling the Doctor’s thighs. She pushes the Doctor’s pants to the side and, dispensing with any notion of teasing, immediately thrusts two fingers inside, pumping them in and out, wet and hot. The Doctor’s eyes slam shut as she grinds down on Rose’s hand, nearly sobbing with relief.

“No,” Rose snaps. “Keep them open.”

The Doctor struggles to obey, training her eyes on Rose’s as Rose ruts against her, fucking her with her fingers.

“Touch yourself,” Rose tells her, and the Doctor obeys that too, letting out a sharp hiss of pleasure at the warmth of her hands on her breasts, the friction of the sleepshirt rubbing between them.

“You’re clever, and you’re beautiful and I love you, but you’re— _fuck_ —you’re an idiot,” Rose grits out, her voice ragged, as the rhythm of her thrusts increases in tempo, as the room fills with the sounds of gasps and obscenely wet noises. “I don’t know how many ways I have to say it. I’m not gonna leave. Do you understand? I’m yours, too. _I’m never going to leave you_.”

Some strange cocktail of emotion wells up in the Doctor at those words. Her cheeks go warm as pressure builds up behind her eyes. But she blinks the stinging sensation away.

Determined to finish what she started, the Doctor slides her hands back up to Rose, one grasping her hip, the other slipping in the slickness between her thigh and Rose’s legs. She quickly finds Rose’s clit and Rose bites back the noise that tries to break out of her. Arms shaking, Rose falls forward, bracing herself with her free hand. The tangle of legs and movement and trapped hands is awkward, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, nothing matters except the friction and the heat and Rose’s breasts sliding against the Doctor’s and the almost pained look on her face as tension shivers and builds deep inside.

“Rose, please,” the Doctor chokes out, and the words have barely left her mouth before Rose’s fingers curl inside her, hitting just the right spot. The Doctor’s back arches off the bed as pleasure jolts through her. Color explodes behind her eyelids, flashing in time with her muscles spasming below while her pulse roars in her ears. She’s dimly aware that she’s crying out, that Rose is shouting muffled and damp words against her throat.

Eventually, her hips stutter and still, Rose working her down with gentling strokes. Rose gasps out the last of her own climax before slumping against the Doctor’s chest. The Doctor’s arm loops around her out of reflex. The two of them just breathe for a moment, until the sounds of the Doctor’s racing heartbeat give way to a quiet ringing in her ears.

“Thank you,” the Doctor manages to say between breaths.

Rose looks up at her. “For what?”

The Doctor considers being cheeky (or worse, honest), but she doesn’t have the energy for either. So instead she leans down for a kiss, and if something about it is hungrier than usual, more urgent, neither of them say anything.

 

**

 

Approximately twenty-three minutes pass before either of them is willing to admit, in any sense of the word, that they are both cold and sticky, and it is officially uncomfortable. Limbs disentangle and bodies roll over so that their respective owners can shuffle off to the loo in turns.

When the Doctor returns to bed, cleaned-up and sporting a clean pair of pants—anything else is too much effort—she can’t help but note with a pang that Rose already looks to be fast asleep again.

She chides herself. Rose has already offered her more than enough reassurance tonight. She can’t reasonably ask for anything else. Surely she’s not _that_ pathetic.

Leaning against the doorjamb, the Doctor watches Rose for a moment while she sleeps. Her face is utterly free of expression, like a figure in a Renaissance portrait, relaxed and unguarded and impossibly young. There’s a tiny smudge of mascara just beneath her right eye; she must have missed it while washing up for the night. Her cheeks are still flushed, her lips a kiss-swollen red, her hair a royal golden mess of a nest.

The Doctor smiles. She refuses to think anything along the lines of how Rose is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. The notion is impossibly cheesy, hopelessly human, ridiculously sentimental. Still, something swells in the Doctor’s chest nonetheless.

Doing her best not to disrupt Rose, she lifts the covers and slides in, facing away before she settles. She jumps at the feeling of Rose’s hand on her shoulder not half a second later.

“Listen,” Rose says sleepily, her voice issuing from somewhere close to the Doctor’s ear. “You’re going to the doctor’s tomorrow.”

The Doctor stiffens at that.

“I know you don’t want to, but you won’t talk to me about whatever’s going on,” Rose continues, punctuating her sentence with a lazy yawn, “so don’t talk to me. Talk to my counselor.”

The Doctor does not reply. She chooses to fidget instead, twisting the bedsheet in her hands.

“I mean, I enjoy a good midnight shag as much as the next girl, but I’m always unbearably knackered in the morning,” Rose teases, and the Doctor grins a little despite herself. “So even if you won’t get help for yourself…would you do it for me?”

Damn. Rose’s words are darts and her mouth has perfect aim. The Doctor rather resents her for it, sometimes. She bites her tongue to keep from snapping back.

Rose sighs behind her. Certain she’s about to roll back over to her side of the bed, the Doctor braces herself. It’s funny, isn’t it, how she manages to bung things up even without uttering a single word? But instead, Rose slips her hand between the Doctor’s arm and her stomach, drawing herself close, until her curves mold comfortably to the Doctor’s back. The sensation of Rose pressed up against her, her chest rising and falling in a gentle metric, her breath warm on the Doctor’s neck, loosens up something deep in the Doctor’s throat.

She places her hand over Rose’s, twining their fingers together and pulling so that Rose is completely cushioned against her.

“I’ll do it for you,” says the Doctor.


End file.
